==================================================================== P I G U L K I an occasional electronic collection of news analysis, press reviews, and humor from/about Poland and the Polish community abroad ____________________________________________________________________ March 31, 1998 ISSN 1060-9288 Number 24 ____________________________________________________________________ Spring '98 Issue In this issue: Polish Affairs THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE POLISH REPUBLIC ... Artur J. Kowalski and Katarzyna Stanclik trans. by Veronika Zielinska ONCE MORE ABOUT NATO ......................... Marek Cypryk trans. by Veronika Zielinska Jumpstarting the Polish computer industry: STUDENT LOANS, MONOPOLYSOFT, TECHNOPARKS ... Jack Tuszynski Polonia Chronicle MY FIRST CONFESSION ......................... Helena Loflin The Net TWILIGHT OF THE LEMMING .................. Dave Phillips PDi's NET RESOURCES FOR POLONIA ........ Marek Zielinski The back page ORWELL MACCABEUS: Some thoughts on Channukah for my Polish friends ........................... Dave Phillips Notes on Contributors About Pigulki ======================================================================== Polish Affairs by Artur J. Kowalski and Katarzyna Stanclik THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE POLISH REPUBLIC On October 17, 1997 a new constitution of the Polish Third Republic went into effect. The new law of the land replaced the temporary "Little Constitution" of 1992 (and those chapters of the old 1952 communist constitution which remained in force after the sweeping amendments in 1989 and 1990). Its supporters in Poland as well as many international observers have praised the passage of the new constitution as an important, necessary and long-awaited step in the process of democratic consolidation. Even so, the content of the new constitution and the way in which it was passed and brought into effect has stirred up quite a bit of controversy. A BIT OF HISTORY The revolution of 1989, in which the communist party lost its monopoly on power, inevitably brought with it sweeping changes in the Polish political system, which called for adjusting the entire legal framework to the new situation. Possibly the most important of such necessary adjustments was the replacement of the old communist constitution, effective since 1952 (with later amendments). Work on the new constitution began in the so-called "contract parliament," elected in the semi-free 1989 elections in which the communist party and its allies had reserved for themselves 65% of the seats in the Sejm - or the lower house of the Polish parliament. Limitations resulting from the 1988-89 Round Table agreements between the communist party and Solidarity, the rapidly changing political situation, new divisions on the political scene, and disagreements on the length of the presidential term made a quick and painless acceptance of an entirely new constitution seem impossible. In a compromise solution adopted instead, the old 1952 constitution was seriously amended. Since this was only a very temporary solution, work on the new constitution was still under way. In the meantime, there was an opportunity to accept the 1935 Constitution of the Polish Second Republic (the so-called "April constitution"), as the basis of the legal and political system. On December 22, 1990 in the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last president of the Polish government-in-exile (the continuation of the legal pre-war government of the Polish Second Republic, which remained in London after World War II) turned over the insignia of presidential authority to Lech Walesa, the first president of the Third Republic chosen in free and popular elections. Together with the insignia, Lech Walesa received the original copy of the 1935 constitution; this was the document upon which the continuity of the Polish government and statehood was based during times of war and exile. However, only certain center-right groups supported this idea. It would have demanded a manifest rejection of the legacy of the communist Polish People's Republic, as well as a substantial increase in presidential authority. Because of Lech Walesa's indifference and the remaining parties' opposition, the issue was not even considered by the parliament. Following the first fully-free elections to the Polish parliament in the fall of 1991, the lawmakers initially concentrated on writing a law outlining the procedure of passing the new constitution. It took them until April 1992 to agree upon it. The law foresaw three steps of the process: preparation of a draft of the constitution in a joint Sejm and Senate constitutional committee, passage of the new constitution by the parliament, and finally its approval in a national referendum. According to these regulations, the parliament elected the constitutional committee which was to prepare a draft of the new constitution, based upon proposals submitted by political parties, the president, and the previous Sejm and Senate committees. However, since the majority of parliament was opposed to strengthening the president's authority (authority which Lech Walesa was striving to achieve) and since agreement on a consistent and acceptable model of the constitution among the many parliamentary parties was impossible, the constitutional committee's work stalled. Incapable of advancing the work of the constitutional committee, in October 1992 the parliament passed the so-called "Little Constitution." The document was a temporary solution supposed to lay out the basic framework of legislative-executive relations while the parliament was working on the "big constitution." According to the "Little Constitution," Poland was basically a parliamentary republic, but with significant presidential powers. For example, the president shared with the government responsibility for foreign policy and for state security; he could, under certain circumstances, dissolve the parliament and accept (or not) resignation of the cabinet; the president also had strong veto powers (which could be overcome by a 2/3 Sejm vote). The "Little Constitution" was supposed to ensure certain political stability under the current circumstances of a strongly fragmented political scene (and resulting fragmentation of the Sejm). However, the provisions adopted in that document were designed as only temporary, and the somewhat unclear delineation of presidential and parliamentary prerogatives soon led to conflicts between president Lech Walesa and the parliament, especially following the early elections of 1993, after which the victorious post-communist SLD was brought into power. The 1993 elections offered a chance to break the impasse in the work on the new constitution. The elections resulted in a parliament dominated by two parties with origins in the old regime: SLD and PSL. Together these two parties controlled two thirds of the Sejm seats, and a vast majority of the senate. Politicians from the SLD (in chronological order: Aleksander Kwasniewski, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, and Marek Mazurkiewicz) were appointed chairmen of the parliamentary constitutional committee, which in 1994 began work on the long-awaited draft of the new constitution, based on seven proposals submitted by: the Senate committee of the former parliament, political parties (PSL and UP, UW, KPN, SLD), president Lech Walesa, and "Solidarity" (the so- called "citizens' project," supported by almost one million signatures nationwide). The presidential elections in 1995, won by the SLD candidate Aleksander Kwasniewski, finally offered a chance for a breakthrough. Because it was dominated by politicians of the SLD-PSL coalition, the constitutional committee was now inclined to somewhat widen presidential powers. On the other hand, unlike his predecessor, the new president did not demand much more power. Yet even though some of the big obstacles standing in the way of the new constitution had thus been removed, the current situation (i.e. the temporary "Little Constitution") suited the needs of the ruling SLD-PSL coalition. Also, lack of the new constitution served as a pretext for postponing the ratification of the concordat with the Vatican, signed in 1993 by the previous post-Solidarity government. While the work of the constitutional committee was slowly moving ahead, a debate exploded on the issue of including appeals to God and Christian values in the constitution, especially in the preamble (due to the apparent inability to come to an agreement on this issue, the possibility of abolishing the preamble altogether was even considered). After discussions among political parties and with representatives of the Catholic Church, a compromise solution was adopted, invoking both Christian as well as general humanist values. This enabled the parliamentary constitutional committee to conclude preparation of the draft proposal of the new constitution, which the committee accepted on January 16, 1997. The committee's proposal was then passed on to the parliament for further consideration. Because of the fear that the voices of opposition would not be taken into account in the committee's work, a few non-parliamentary constitutional projects came into being. One such project worth mentioning is that of Stanislaw Michalkiewicz from UPR: it can be described as concise, minimalistic and conservative-liberal. Even though Solidarity's "citizens' project" was one of the seven discussed by the parliamentary constitutional committee, Solidarity leaders felt that the project's postulates were being ignored in the committee's proceedings. Arguing that the million supporting signatures gave the Solidarity project special legitimacy over the parliamentary proposals, Solidarity demanded that its project be submitted to the national referendum alongside the parliamentary one. The main differences between the emerging parliamentary project and the Solidarity one were not easily surmountable. Solidarity's demands to emphasize the importance of Christian values and the primacy of natural law in the constitution, to increase trade unions' role in politics, to denationalize state property, or to adopt the plurality electoral system, were unacceptable to the parliamentary majority. However, enjoying large support from the center-right opposition and from the Catholic circles, this project became a clear threat to the parliamentary one. Therefore in early 1997, during the parliamentary debates over the draft of the new constitution, some of the solutions from the Solidarity project were incorporated into the parliamentary one. Even so, these modifications and the compromise solution adopted in wording of the preamble were perceived as too superficial and artificial to satisfy the opposition. In spite of all the disagreements over the shape of the new cardinal law, the parliament proceeded with the subsequent steps of the legislative process. On April 2, 1997, the National Assembly (conjoined Sejm and Senate) passed the latest version of the new constitution with the votes of the SLD, PSL, UW, and UP and with objections from the BBWR, KPN, Solidarity and a few representatives from the PSL. On May 25, 1997, Polish citizens accepted the new Constitution in a referendum, with 52.71% of the votes for and 45.09% against, and with a turnout of 42.86%. On July 15, 1997, the Supreme Court confirmed the validity of the referendum results, and on the next day president Aleksander Kwasniewski signed the constitution. Three months from that point, on October 17, 1997, the Polish Republic began living under the new constitution. A SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION The new constitution is based on several underlying principles: The Republic of Poland is a democratic state of law. Poland is a unitary (i.e. non-federal) state. The Polish nation is the sovereign, governing through its elected representatives. The nation itself is not defined; thus it is presumed to mean the political community encompassing all the citizens of Poland. The political system is based on the division of power between the legislative (the parliament), executive (the president and the prime minister heading the government) and the judiciary branches of government. According to the new constitution, Poland has a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, in which the role of the parliament is strengthened over that of the president. The new constitution preserves the bicameral structure of the parliament, with a 460 seat lower house (Sejm) elected every four years in free, secret, equal, direct and proportional elections, and with a 100 seat Senate, elected in free, direct and secret elections. The Sejm is the main legislative body, which also controls the government. The legislative initiative is a prerogative of the Sejm, Senate, the president, the government, and the people (the constitution allows for a "popular legislative initiative" which has to be backed with at least 100,000 signatures). The president is elected directly by the people every five years for a maximum of two terms. He is the head of state, representing Poland abroad, and the head of the armed forces, protecting the country's sovereignty and security. The role of the president is weakened in comparison to the "Little Constitution". The president is no longer able to influence the choice of the ministers of foreign affairs, internal affairs and defense (although he still nominates the ambassadors). Instead, he only cooperates with the prime minister and the relevant minister in foreign policy matters. Also, under the new constitution the Sejm needs only a 3/5 majority to override the presidential veto. Main executive power rests with the government, responsible before the Sejm. The government is headed by a prime minister, designated by the president and confirmed by the majority of the Sejm votes. The government controls domestic and foreign policy. It can be removed from power by a constructive vote of no-confidence from the Sejm. Courts and tribunals are independent. The new constitution enormously strengthens the role of the Constitutional Tribunal. The tribunal makes judgements on the constitutionality of laws, international treaties, administrative regulations, and the goals and activities of political parties. It also resolves disputes concerning prerogatives of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Its pronouncements are final (under the "Little Constitution" the Sejm could override the Constitutional Tribunal's pronouncements with a 2/3 majority vote). Political pluralism in Poland is enforced by the constitutional guarantee of the freedom to create and conduct activities of political parties. The only exception are Nazi, fascist, communist, or racist organizations and parties, outlawed by the constitution. The economic system is defined as: "a social market economy based on economic freedom, private property and solidarity, including dialogue and collaboration among social partners". There are constitutional guarantees of private property and inheritance rights. However, economic freedom can be restricted in the case of "an important public interest." The constitution guarantees civil, economic, social and cultural rights. These rights can be limited only to the extent allowed by international law. Everyone has equal rights before the law, and the right to be equally treated by the state agents. The constitution prohibits discrimination for any reason whatsoever in social, political and economic matters. Polish citizenship is a right of all people born to Polish parents. The state can not deprive anyone of his citizenship (it will revoke the citizenship only at the person's request). No Polish citizen can be forced to leave the territory of the Republic, or prevented from entering Poland. The constitution guarantees the right to free public education at all levels, as well as equal access to medical care financed by public means. The citizens' duties include: loyalty to the Polish Republic, national defense, obeying the laws, paying taxes, protecting the common good and the environment. Poland is bound to follow the laws and regulations resulting from ratification of international treaties and agreements. With all the disputes regarding the content of the constitution, the constitutional committee attempted to arrive at a generally acceptable compromise. Clearly the committee members decided that it was better to expand the constitution rather than to omit something that may potentially be important. As a result, what was created proved to be one of the longest cardinal laws in Europe (243 articles). The four party coalition which passed the constitution believed that its exhaustive character was undoubtedly a positive quality. Even so, the basic argument invoked in support of the new constitution was essentially the very fact of its adoption. The pro-constitution camp argued that now Poland could finally begin building the entire legal system based on the cardinal law. Moreover, the new constitution finally replaced the communist constitution of 1952 (which is not entirely true, as the communist constitution was annulled by the "Little Constitution" of 1992). The supporters of the new constitution also stressed that its adoption will facilitate Poland's entry into the European Union and NATO. The passage of the new cardinal law and its popular approval in a national referendum as well as the democratic basis of the country's political system confirmed in the document were supposed to prove to the outside world that Poland had successfully consolidated its democracy. Poland's entry into the EU and NATO will be further facilitated by articles 90 and 91 of the constitution, which simplify ratification of agreements and international regulations, and subsequently accept them as part of the legal system of the Republic. Unquestionably, among the strengths of the new constitution are: the prohibition of preventive censorship and of extradition of Polish citizens and the constitutional guarantees that the state can not deprive anyone of Polish citizenship or impose restrictions on freedom of travel. Also laudable is the protection of civil liberties. Another praiseworthy aspect of the new constitution is the establishment of the institution of State Treasury and the guarantee of central bank independence. Equally important is the new constitutional limitation of the amount of public debt (up to 60 percent of the GDP). In the same spirit of enforcing fiscal responsibility the new constitution demands that all drafts of new laws presented before the Sejm have to include estimates of their budgetary consequences. Many of the praises for the new constitutions largely depend on their authors' political outlook. Voices from the left and the center of the political spectrum applaud the constitution's extensive social guarantees, especially the protection of the poorer sectors of the society (e.g. right to employment, the so-called social justice clause, the state's duty to combat unemployment). They praise the constitutional guarantee of free public education and healthcare. On the other side of the political spectrum the conservative and Christian circles praise mainly the constitutional protection of citizens' freedom, and its stress on the importance of marriage (defined as an exclusively heterosexual union) and family as a foundation of the society. In our opinion the strengths of the new constitution are far outweighed by its numerous and substantial flaws. We list the most important below: The constitution is split between its function as a positive act, describing the state's structure and the basic functions of the state organs, and a declarative act, expressing wishful thinking of the lawmakers. While to a certain degree normative statements are to be expected in a constitution, as they pronounce the desired foundations of the social order, in the new Polish constitution they far exceed that function. The lawmakers obviously wanted to constitutionalize their desires to have the "social market economy form the basis of the economic system" (art.20), or for Poland to "realize the principles of social justice" (art.2), but it is difficult to discern from the constitution what these concepts mean in real terms, and how they are supposed to be implemented. The constitution generally contains too many wishful thinking clauses. It is full of unenforceable and thus essentially meaningless regulations, which moreover may result in legal challenges. While declaring that "no one can be discriminated against in political, social or economic life for any reason whatsoever" (art. 32) the lawmakers no doubt had the noblest of sentiments. But the clause itself is obviously flawed: one can imagine a person deprived of public rights, who on the basis of this article would sue the state for discrimination. Not to mention that the article apparently prohibits the discrimination (under any circumstances) of convicts, children, or foreigners. Similarly flawed (in terms of possible legal consequences for the Polish state) is article 6, declaring that the Polish Republic "creates the conditions for [] equal access to cultural goods" or article 70, which makes the public authorities responsible for "providing the citizens' with universal and equal access to education." There are many other unenforceable but quite harmless wishful thinking clauses, which nonetheless clutter the constitution. For example, article 75 states that the public authorities "introduce policies which lead to satisfying housing needs of the citizens, and especially combat homelessness." It is hard to say what action on the part of the government would constitute breach of this article. Similarly article 178 states that "judges are entitled to the conditions of work and remuneration corresponding to the dignity of the office and the extent of their duties." Again, this clause is essentially meaningless: what remuneration does or does not correspond to the dignity of the judge's position? The document is plagued by internal inconsistency, most likely resulting from the compromise between the two opposing projects. As a consequence (presumably to obscure the real disagreements over meanings of the terms used) the lawmakers often preferred to avoid definitions. This is the case with even quite fundamental notions. For example, article 4 ("the supreme power in the Polish Republic belongs to the Nation") satisfies the political right, but since the Nation is undefined, constitutional scholars conclude (to the left's content) that the concept means "political community" and thus all the citizens. And the average Pole is left somewhat bewildered by all the arguments. Examples of inconsistencies abound in the constitution. Article 32 states that "everyone is equal before the law; everyone has the right to be equally treated by the public authorities". In article 60, however, the right of equal access to public service is reserved for the Polish citizens enjoying full public rights (going in the opposite direction, article 19 states that the Polish Republic takes "special care of the veterans of freedom fights, and especially the disabled veterans"). Similarly, a clause of article 32 (cited earlier: prohibition of any discrimination in political, social or economic life) conflicts with article 65 (limiting the right to employ children), or the articles establishing age requirements for running for elected offices. Sometimes inconsistencies can be found in neighboring articles, or even within the same article. For example, one clause of article 68 guarantees all citizens equal access to public health care. But the next clause states that public authorities have to provide special health care to children, pregnant women, the handicapped and the elderly. The constitution is too long and that length does not translate into quality. All in all, the document covers too many issues (which do not really belong there, such as details of the electoral system, or internal rules and regulations of the Sejm). Most likely this obscures the meaning of the constitution to the average citizen. Given the 243 articles and 13 chapters, it is even difficult to navigate through the whole document. What is more disconcerting, the inclusion of so many issues means that future changes of laws and regulations of much lower rank will have to lead to constitutional amendments. Moreover, the constitution is filled with unnecessary repetitions. For example, article 33 states in the first clause that "man and woman in the Polish Republic have equal rights in family, political, social, and economic life", while the second clause elaborates that this equality specifically includes education, work, professional advancement, equal pay for equal work and so on (in light of the already mentioned article 32, this is superfluous information, given that everyone in Poland is equal before the law). Similarly article 102 (one can not concurrently hold the positions of a senator and a Sejm representative) is unnecessary, since article 100 states that one can not run for the Sejm and Senate at the same time. While it may be a normal constitutional practice to leave the details of certain laws out of the constitution and refer the reader to specific laws of lower rank, in the Polish constitution this happens in almost 100 cases. Unfortunately, "the details defined by law" include such important things as limitations of civil liberties (e.g. article 57 on the freedom of assembly or article 49 on the freedom of communication), economic freedom (art. 22), protection of private property (art. 64). Similarly some economic liberties can be limited in the case of "an important public interest" (art. 22 on freedom of economic activity; art. 59 on the right to strike). While we recognize that civil liberties may need to be limited under extraordinary circumstances (war, natural disasters), we object to the lack of a clear constitutional guarantee of the essential liberties, unbreachable under any conditions. The constitution weakens national defense capability by introducing a long (possibly lasting a few days) procedure to announce a state of war and appoint the commander-in-chief of the armed forces (articles 228-231). The diffusion of responsibility and the conflicting competencies of the Sejm, Senate, the president and the government present in the constitution may, given the modern military technology, cause a disaster within the first few hours of conflict. Also, unlike its 1935 predecessor, the new Polish constitution does not clearly outline a mechanism which would ensure the continuation of state authority in time of war. Finally, the constitution passes up a chance to take a decisive stance on the legacy of the Polish People's Republic. Just about the only relevant reference to these years is a half-hearted fragment of the preamble ("we while remembering the bitter experiences from the times when basic liberties and human rights were abused in our Fatherland"). A lot of important issues, such as reprivatization or the continuation of the tolerant "thick line" policy towards the former communists are thus left out in the open. OTHER ASPECTS OF ADOPTING THE CONSTITUTION Leaving aside the relative strengths and weaknesses of the new constitution, we would like to shift our attention to the debates which took place during the process of drafting and enacting the cardinal law. The previous sections focused on the disputes concerning the actual content of the constitution. The following passages will discuss other issues which were subject to political controversy. The opposition, which exerted only limited influence during the constitution-writing process, fairly quickly rejected the parliament's proposal as post-communist, concentrating not as much on the content of the document, but rather on the political roots of the majority of its supporters in the parliament. In its anti-constitution campaign before the national referendum, the opposition mainly relied on the above argument. It did not really try to explain to the public why the "citizens' project" supported by Solidarity was substantively better than the parliamentary one. The few direct references to the articles from the parliamentary draft were presented in a highly distorted and exaggerated manner. The right warned that under the new constitution the president will install a dictatorship, or that with articles 90 and 91 in place (designed to facilitate Poland's entry into the EU and NATO and thus allowing for Poland to transfer the prerogatives of certain state organs to international organizations) Poland's sovereignty will be endangered. Another prominent criticism of the constitution concerned parental rights. In the new constitution (articles 48 and 72) parents have the right to bring up their children according to their beliefs, but taking into consideration the level of emotional maturity of the child and the child's own beliefs (moreover, the state now protects children's rights). This led to claims that under the new constitution children will be taken from their parents (if the parents try to impose their will on them). What is striking is that in the midst of the very loud and long-lasting extra-parliamentary constitutional debates, these were the main charges levied by the opposition. The obvious (from the opposition's point of view) faults and weaknesses of the parliamentary draft of the constitution were conspicuously absent from its anti-constitution campaign. The supporters of the parliamentary project in their pro-constitution campaign also relied on exaggeration and misrepresentation of facts. According to them, the voters should support the constitution basically because of its truly democratic and European character. The rejection of the constitution in the national referendum would mean that for a long time Poland would be left without any constitution (given that at the time the "Little Constitution" was in effect, it was a false argument, which nonetheless proved to be quite potent in the end). Moreover, the negative outcome of the referendum would signal that Poland is a politically unstable country, which could in turn jeopardize Poland's entry into NATO and the EU. The pro-constitution camp even attempted to win over the Catholic opposition by advancing the argument that the acceptance of the constitution would finally open the way for the ratification of the concordat with the Holy See. This, however, proved to be false. The constitution was accepted, but soon after the June papal visit to Poland it became obvious that the concordat's ratification still faces insurmountable obstacles in the parliament, at least for the near future (the concordat was finally ratified by the new Solidarity government that came into power following the September 1997 elections). After the constitutional referendum the opposition filed numerous charges with the Supreme Court in an attempt to invalidate the results. The lesser charges concerned voting irregularities in many districts (including insufficient protection of the ballots before the referendum). While the court recognized some of them, it concluded that these irregularities did not have much influence on the overall results. The fundamental charge was that the voter turnout was insufficient for the results to be valid (it was below the 50% required for valid referenda in the "Little Constitution"). This charge was rejected. The court agreed with the interpretation put forward by the constitution's authors and advocates, that in the case of the constitutional referendum there is no specific turnout requirement. While the "Little Constitution" referred to referenda in general, the April 1992 law on the procedure for adopting the new constitution (which was assigned constitutional weight) did not specify any turnout requirements for the constitutional referendum to be valid. The Supreme Court challenge was the last chance for the opposition. But even before the court verdict was announced, the supporters of the new constitution began celebrating their inevitable victory. The most prominent example of this was the presidential announcement that the constitution signing ceremony would take place the day after the Supreme Court delivers its verdict, even though the verdict itself was as yet unknown. In our opinion the enactment and acceptance of the constitution in its present form was a big mistake. As we discussed before, the constitution is too broad, unclear and internally inconsistent a document. It is mostly incomprehensible to the average citizen and as such can not and will not serve as the basic social contract. Many of the constitution's clauses are not enforceable and serve only as expressions of the political compromise reached by its authors, or of their wishful thinking. We do not find the arguments for the speedy enactment of the constitution convincing. We do not agree with what essentially was the primary argument put forward for the new constitution: that any constitution is better than none. We believe that it would have been better to wait with the adoption of the new constitution, if the longer wait would result in a better cardinal law. The least the lawmakers could have done was to carefully read the constitution draft and prune it of all the stylistic and substantive inconsistencies, as well as of the many unnecessary repetitions and unenforceable clauses. Unfortunately, all these were obviously a price for the political compromises surrounding the constitution writing process. And this truly is unfortunate, because transient political concerns impressed their seal on a document which is supposed to be the founding rock of the new Polish democracy. Now this founding rock already looks like it is cracked in places. The many defects and unsatisfying compromises present in the document will most likely call for changes in the near future. The all-inclusive nature of the constitution means that a relatively insignificant shift in policy may necessitate a constitutional amendment. An example of this is the inclusion of the basis of the electoral system. The current administrative reform in Poland may lead to some changes in the electoral law which now will have to become constitutional amendments. And each change in the constitution undermines the credibility and rank of such a document. In this situation, one should admire president Aleksander Kwasniewski's unwavering optimism. The president believed that the new constitution had been enacted "for the benefit of generations". However, this opinion was not shared by Poles in general. As president Kwasniewski was signing the new constitution, newspapers reported that nearly half of the Poles polled expressed the belief that the constitution would be changed in the near future. But then the president may be right. After all, a Polish saying states that makeshift solutions are also the ones which last the longest. Translated by Veronika Zielinska and Katarzyna Stanclik Copyright ) 1998 by Artur J. Kowalski and Katarzyna Stanclik ======================================================================== Polish Affairs by Marek Cypryk ONCE MORE ABOUT NATO The voices of opposition have sounded once again, this time in response to the nearing US Senate ratification debate on the acceptance of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO. I will admit that I do not fully comprehend the motivation behind this opposition, but since respected names appear amongst this party, it would seem useful to rehash briefly the motivating arguments for widening the North Atlantic Pact. The acceptance of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO will have the following consequences: 1.It will increase the population potential of the participating nations by approximately sixty million people. These three European nations show great social stability as well; domestic and international conflicts hardly exist. This is a differentiating factor between these nations and certain other NATO members, which no doubt have such social issues. Moreover, the unemployment rates of the candidate nations, though significant (6-11%), do not stray from the mean number for Western European nations (10.3%), and therefore do not pose a threat for stability in the future. In general, most of the peoples in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic support their countries joining NATO. 2.Although Poland's, Hungary's and the Czech Republic's per-capita GNPs are lower than that of NATO-member nations, the three do show a large growth dynamic. Poland, for example, noted a 6.9% growth in its GNP in 1997. This is the third year in a row showing such significant growth for Poland, placing us next to Ireland in the category of fastest developing nations in Europe. Central European nations, especially Poland, also showed remarkable stability in the face of the Asian financial crisis. 3.The Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary have at their disposal significant, though partially outdated military potential. The traditions of the military industry in these nations, especially the Czech Republic, allow for quick modernization of the army. These nations display a significant amount of determination in this area. The necessity to meet NATO standards will increase the amount of purchases from the US, which means a large economic advantage for American armament producers. >From an economic and military standpoint, expanding NATO is a great investment. It makes strengthening the pact possible at a relatively low cost, as this in large part will be covered by the new members. Moreover these nations need not obtain the full "impact force" that would agree with NATO standards for quite a while, making it easier for them to be obliged to pay. Reorganization of the army may even take a few years. Certain commentators give reasons against the expansion of NATO for fear of what Russia's reaction may be. Its isolation may lead to a new cold war, they say. Behind this rationale, I believe that there lies a seemingly fundamental error in thought. 1.Russian politicians play a skillful game, an element of which is to feign hysteria. They have been playing this game successfully now for a substantial period of time. As history shows, however, their calculations have always been based on a cool assessment of the balance of power. Surely, the strengthening of NATO will tend to greaten the Russians' respect for it, and they will be more likely to yield to it; this is precisely why they are so wary of this process. 2.On the contrary, leaving a "political void" in Central Europe can encourage Russian nationalists to rebuild the empire and to regain influence in this region. Russia's lack of stability and its internal problems may increase the popularity of political groups, which will want to excite the national pride of citizens and steer their attention away from internal failure by using expansive external politics. This mechanism has been a motor for Russian territorial expansion many times throughout history. It also explains a large part of Hitler's coming to power and, more recently, the conflict over the Falklands. 3.We cannot predict Russia's future. But I do believe that the increasing proximity of the democratic world to its borders will augment the influence and penetration of democratic ideas and rules of the free market upon the Russian community. For it must be remembered that because it took a different developmental road, these kinds of ideas are generally not commonly understood or accepted in Russia. 4.Investing in Russia can help concepts such as democracy and the free market be better understood and accepted there. Strengthening the Central European economy (which would be a result of integration with the Western world) should help significantly with this process. Central European countries are a natural platform for economic trade with Russia, and thanks to frequent contact with the West and knowledge of the Russian language, the economic elites of these two countries can participate in and greatly facilitate the investment of Western capital (including American) in Russia. 5.I am under the impression that in certain circles, the thought exists that Russia will always be the USA's main global rival, and that as a result, the "axis" of international politics in the Department of State should be Russian relations. Meanwhile, the situation is changing dynamically, and in a few years it may become apparent that the threat to NATO comes from somewhere completely different; for example China or the Islamic countries. On this note, it is also in the best interest of member nations of the Pact to strengthen NATO. I hope that the arguments presented here will convince the reader that expanding NATO is in every aspect beneficial to the nations already participating in the Pact, and that it is worth investing a few billion dollars in this process. Translated by Veronika Zielinska Copyright ) 1998 by Marek Cypryk ======================================================================== Polish Affairs by Jack Tuszynski Jumpstarting the Polish computer industry: STUDENT LOANS, MONOPOLYSOFT, TECHNOPARKS Poles dominate the field of logic. One need only visit a technical library and look at the last names of the authors of most articles on the subject to find that the field of computer logic is a Polish specialty. However when one looks at the career opportunities within Poland for computer scientists, they consist mostly of sales and marketing or technical support positions. To the multinational, Silicon Valley-centered computer industry, Poland is a market of 38 million consumers for the products they develop and not much more. Several steps need to be taken in Poland to jumpstart the computer industry. First, the right conditions must be created which would allow investments in education to pay off. Second, the Microsoft monopoly model should be utilized to assist Polish computer companies and professionals to develop resources. Third, a different kind of technopark should be introduced to enable Polish software production to be more competitive. STUDENT LOANS The author's parents operate a translation business in Los Angeles, California. Time and again their task is to translate a fresh diploma. Many young Polish professionals leave Poland one week or one month after graduation. Investing money into Polish education is ridiculous, because students immediately transfer the acquired skills abroad. Recently the Donosy daily had troubles editing their periodical because everybody left the country for more lucrative positions abroad. The goal is not to introduce a new Berlin Wall which would prevent ambitious youth from leaving the country. However, on the other hand, it is also not fair to ask Polish academia to subsidize foreign universities and high technology industry by providing them with well-educated young citizens ready for work. Nobody is forcing the youth of Poland to stay in the country. And yet students never find it necessary to leave their surroundings one year before the end of their schooling. They never bolt one month before graduation. They come to the author's parents one week or month after getting their diploma, and present the new world with a cultivated adult ready to serve. The solution to this problem is quite simple. The answer is to cooperate with a system like TRW. The company maintains a database of financial credit information. Polish universities should cost a significant amount per semester, this cost should be tax-deductible later in life. Loans should be made to anybody who cannot afford the increased high tuition. Money can be supplied to banks by the national treasury for this purpose. Private banks can maintain the operation of the loans for a small percent. Upon graduation, students should pay back the loans in lieu of paying taxes. In a few years their debt should be paid off. Transcripts to foreign universities and firms should only be provided for those portions of the schooling for which the student has paid in full. Nobody would force young people to accept the terms and agreements of such a setup. And there are plenty of private universities to which parents can send their children if students do not plan to stay in Poland and do not wish to be burdened with a public university education debt. However, the agreement does guarantee that Polish taxpayers are not stuck with the bill for educating people who prefer to work in California, Massachusetts, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France or elsewhere immediately after finishing school. MONOPOLYSOFT In Poland the workers have been successful in forcing their agenda through by means of democratic reforms which support tariffs and quotas which are used as bargaining chips for foreign investments. For example, 35 percent tariffs on automobiles have induced General Motors and Daewoo to invest to develop large factories in the region. Computer professionals should insist on the same treatment as their blue collar counterparts. In Pigulki #19, the Lodz Spring edition, MOS was described as an alternative to the Microsoft monopoly [Note 1]. This concept has since taken on a new name, called the Network Computer (NC). Unfortunately the idea did not quite catch on. Computers are a unique industry in terms of innovation. When a new technology is introduced, it either entirely transforms the nature of computing, within a period of one to three years, or the technology fades away and never becomes successful. DOS and the personal computer were such a phenomenon. The NC tried to do the same, but unfortunately it never really caught on. The key to Bill Gates' stranglehold of the information industry is his marketing scheme. Microsoft does not count software copies. Instead it counts quantity of hardware units sold and prices a PC vendor according to how many computer units it sells. A computer manufacturer is not so much a factory as it is an integration facility. One can purchase hardware from various suppliers worldwide. Assemble the bundle and burn it in and test it in the country. The operating system component is always supplied by Microsoft. Any other operating system can be installed on a unit. However, Microsoft sells its operating system to a vendor if and only if a copy is purchased for each and every computer sold. There is not much incentive for a computer firm to purchase a rival's operating system if the assembly facility already purchased a copy for the computer from Microsoft. Besides, there is not much need or demand to install any competitor's operating system. In addition, it is much easier and more productive to install third party software from Microsoft, all from a single source, than to search for solutions elsewhere at a technical risk. Capitalism, left to its own devices, occasionally creates a monopoly. Microsoft is a classic example of an exclusive supplier. So how can the Polish computer industry benefit from the Microsoft operating system monopoly? There is an old Anglo saying, "If you can't beat them, join them." The Polish computer industry should join Microsoft and employ its own highly successful tactics to promote Polish business in the country. Today Poland charges a 10 percent tariff on imported computer products. This tax does not add any value to the industry. It is merely a revenue collector for the government. No company is seriously enough stifled by the tariff to encourage them to manufacture hardware or software in Poland. Unlike the 35 percent tariff on automobiles, which prompted GM and Daewoo to invest in Polish automobile manufacturing, the Hewlett Packards and IBMs of the world are not rushing to invest in the Polish computer high technology sector. Currently there are several competing software bundles which constitute a core suite of PC services. A suite of services consists of a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, and a graphics editor. The Microsoft Office bundle is the standard of the industry and the leader of the pack. IBM's purchase of Lotus gave it ownership of another software suite. Corel recently produced a Java version of the WordPerfect software and bundled it with a set of accompanying programs which constitute a complete package. The Polish computer industry should insist that the 10 percent tariff on imported computer products should be eliminated. In its place a government supported software bundle should be installed on each and every motherboard imported into the country. Once per year there should be a competitive bid by software bundle manufacturers to receive a concession to become a government supported bundle. The concession award process should take into consideration local content. This should be counted in terms of the amount of software development which the software bundle manufacturer hires inside Poland. This does not preclude the sales of other manufacturer's software bundles. If somebody really wants to buy a piece of software and install it and run it then that is fine. However, when somebody purchases a new computer with a motherboard inside, then they must purchase a Microsoft operating system with it and they must purchase a government supported software bundle with it. Ideally, the price of computer equipment should not increase too much because the price of the government-supported bundle should be priced about the same as the current 10 percent tariff on computer hardware imports. It would however give software manufacturers an incentive to produce programs in Poland, and not just to sell them. While the U.S. Justice department considers the case of Explorer vs. Navigator, the Polish government should be approaching both companies and selling the prime spot on Polish computer shelves to the company that employs the most Polish computer scientists to create their product. TECHNOPARKS Recently there has been talk about setting up information industry technoparks in Poland. In a recent edition of the Warsaw Voice there is an article on this topic. The nature of a Polish informatics technopark should be different from the low technology technoparks sprouting up in the country. A successful information technopark should be designed to maximize the benefits and minimize the cost associated with developing high technology products. The subject of the technopark should be the employee, and not so much the company. It is difficult to compete with the U.S. computer industry. In California for instance, a computer professional earns about $4,000 to 5,000 per month. In contrast the same person in an average city in Poland earns about $1000 per month. One can connect to the following two web sites to investigate the huge gap in compensation. These two web sites ideally describe the competition that a Polish technopark faces from the U.S. and Western Europe. Optimus (The Polish IBM) Wage Survey http://www.onet.pl/praca/wynagr.htm (note that $1 USD = 3.4 PLN). Pencom Interactive Career Center (Job Survey) http://www.pencom.com/indexpts.htm Information industry technoparks should be located about 40-50KM outside of popular Polish cities which have key technical universities. Access to the big city should be via modern highway and train. For example, several ideal locations would be West of Warsaw near the A1/A2 intersection, in between Katowice/Krakow near the A4 freeway, or west of Wroclaw, near the A3/A4 junction. It is necessary to locate the parks nearby newly developed roads because there are already plans and funds allocated for new and modern hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and infrastructure in these areas. European Union money is currently being used to construct modern automobile expressways with service islands of various size. Nearby one of these service stops not too far from a big city would be the ideal location for a computer technopark. Technoparks should be located near train stops. Special rail buses should be reserved for non-stop service to/from the adjacent big city at convenient times. If the technoparks are located 40-50 KM from a big city, then one can be in the downtown area of the city in 20-30 minutes from the technopark. Technoparks should be located not too far from airports that serve European routes. Helicopter service to/from the airports to the technopark should be considered when the technoparks grow large and successful enough. Big plots of farm land or government-owned land should be purchased or acquired and reserved for selling to technical professionals. There is plenty of land in Poland. If one travels by train 40-50 KM outside of a big popular Polish city one realizes that the country has vast huge quantities of mostly undeveloped real estate. The Silicon Valley started in an agricultural area outside of a big metropolis. The key is to find a good location near a highway which is currently being developed, buy or allocate a huge quantity of land, and reserve it for use by high technology firms and the employees' families. The key to technopark competitiveness is the real estate and tax package. The goal is to compete for the family which would normally emigrate to California or to one of the top European Union countries where demand for computer professionals is high. If they settle in Poland near a technopark instead, they can look to receive a comfortable plot of land. In addition, banks should be brought on board to help finance new medium sized "Canadian Style" homes to be built on the land. While the technopark would still charge corporate taxes, income taxes would be frozen to current levels for a period of several years. To encourage employers to set up shop in the technopark area, communities should offer land to them for free or for very inexpensive prices. If there are any buildings left over from military bases or government installations in the area, they should be leased as offices for extremely low prices. A generous corporate tax package should accompany the real estate incentives. Housing should be located adjacent to the technopark in a nice neighborhood reserved for computer professionals' families. A technopark should provide individuals with a $3,000/month subsidy. How can this be done? A study published in the Los Angeles Times in February 1998 states that the cost of living for a middle class family of four in San Francisco is $80,000, in Los Angeles $66,000, and in an average U.S. city it is $60,000. This figure includes housing, taxes, and other expenses. Housing accounts for approximately $2000/month in earnings. In the San Francisco area houses sell for about $400,000 and salaries are therefore higher proportionally. In Los Angeles housing sells for approximately $250,000. In big Polish cities houses cost about 1/3-2/3 the price of U.S. homes. A "Canadian Style" house costs approximately $50,000 to build in the U.S. or Poland today. The real reason houses cost so much in metropolitan areas is due to real estate speculation and supply and demand. Real estate prices are also fueled by inexpensive and accessible home loans. To purchase an old home (30-50 years old) in an upper middle class neighborhood in Los Angeles a person needs to pay $50,000 in down payment. Afterward the mortgage payments, property taxes, various insurance payments, and utilities associated with home ownership all add up to cost approximately $2000/month. Income tax accounts for about $1000/month in earnings. If a computer professional earns $5,000/month in California and pays 20% tax, that comes out to $1000/month. In contrast the equivalent Polish professional individual earning $1000/month and pays 20% tax ends up paying $200/month in income tax. Income taxes in a technopark should be frozen to the current levels that an individual pays while working in Poland. To help a company adjust to the Polish and European government benefits, firms which invest in a technopark should be exempt from paying the government social package, called the ZUS, if they instead offer their employees a lucrative medical and retirement package. Automobile transportation costs account for approximately $400/month in earnings. According to the Los Angeles Daily news, it costs $4400/year to buy and maintain a Ford Escort automobile. This includes purchase or loan price, maintenance, insurance (liability and comprehensive). Technoparks should set up car loan pool cooperatives. Families in the technopark do not need to commute far to work, and trains to the big city should be available. It could be a big optional cost advantage for families to chose not to have their own automobile, or to have one automobile for occasional use, and instead participate in a car loan pool program. After-school daycare costs account for approximately $400/month in earnings. Schools should provide care for children 8 hours per day. In California after-school daycare in public school from 3PM to 5PM costs $200 per month per child. For a family with two children this extra cost can add up to $4,800 per year. A youth recreation center near the technopark community open weekend nights can in addition significantly reduce the baby sitting costs which couples must pay if they want to have a night out. Who would be interested in settling down to work in a technopark? There are approximately 50 million Poles in the world. 40 million live in Poland. Many of the 10 million Polish people abroad have vast experience in the high technology and computer industry. Most have emigrated abroad after being educated and trained in the country. Young people in Poland who find that they cannot afford a good life due to their meager salaries and the steep cost of housing in the big cities can sign up to participate in the technopark plan. Recently an advertisement appeared on the internet real estate bulletin boards relating to Warsaw: "Seeking to purchase a flat in Warsaw. When quoting price, please do not forget how much people earn and how much of their salary it is possible to save." Both of these groups should be targeted when recruiting citizens for the concept. The true advantage of the technopark to employers is that they are given access to top-notch talent and people. If an individual can earn the average Polish computer professional wage of $1000-$2000 per month in a technopark, then they can live in Poland with a California-style standard of living. They will have mortgage payments for a house which are much much lower than in California or the big Polish cities if land speculation is kept in check. They save a significant amount of money by participating in an automobile pool, living within walking distance of their offices, and using the train to get around. They do not have to worry about high after-school daycare and baby sitting costs. And they should not be asked to pay the high taxes on larger earnings. These savings totals come out to be at least $3,000 benefit per family per month and possibly more. This boost that the technopark in Poland should provide makes the environment for an individual who decides to stay and work in Poland as a computer professional worthwhile. Poland can and should jumpstart its computer industry. Recently the government is in a panic caused by a continuously increasing trade deficit. The bottom line is that the country's chief exports are mostly raw unprocessed materials used in heavy industry. Further expansion of the economy depends on modern technology. The steps needed to implement change are to address the education and youth problem. The computer tariff should be reengineered and Polish program producers should insist that the government promotes use of Microsoft tactics to enable Polish firms to break into the software development business as producers as well as consumers. And the role of technoparks should be changed to focus on maximizing the benefits and minimizing the obstacles for the employees who work there. Polish logicians are arguably the finest in the world. It is about time that the country concentrate on developing its best assets in the international arena. Notes: [1] Jack Tuszynski, "Polish Networking Issues 1995," Pigulki nr. 19, May 15, 1995. Copyright ) 1998 by Jack Tuszynski ======================================================================== Polonia Chronicle Helena Loflin MY FIRST CONFESSION "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my First Confession. I have committed the following sins..." In 1955 I was a second grader at St. Hedwig's elementary school in Wilmington, Delaware. Like my 65 classmates, I had been preparing to receive the Sacrament of Penance for several weeks. Sister Mary Francetta, a Felician, taught us the Ten Commandments. We took turns reciting them in class during Religion. When we weren't reciting, Sister explained what each of the Commandments meant, and we comprehended as best as seven year olds could. We understood that we needed to honor our mothers and fathers by obeying them and never talking back to them. We were to love The One True God and respect all that He created. The Commandments about stealing, killing, and coveting were intended for adults. At least we wouldn't have to worry about breaking those or confessing them for a few years. St. Hedwig's Parish was composed of 2,000 Polish-American families. I grew up in a row home one block from St. Hedwig's church and elementary school. Until I went to college, I saw the church, a majestic gothic structure, now on the National Register of Historic Places, every day of my life. Like all of my family members, I was christened and married there. St. Hedwig's towered over the neighborhood with spires that could be seen for miles around. It had enormous stained glass windows, hand-carved white marble altars, interior pillars several stories tall, and life-size Stations of the Cross. All this was a tribute to the neighborhood of first and second generation immigrant families whose labor and sacrifice made it possible to erect a structure in 1906 that could not be duplicated today without a nationwide fund-raising effort. St. Hedwig's was and is an imposing setting for a seven year old's First Confession. During second grade, I became friends with my cousin Mary. She was a couple of years older than me and lived two blocks away. Every Saturday afternoon we headed to the Ace movie theater on Maryland Avenue, a five-block walk past well-kept row homes and corner stores. The neighbors we passed by, many of them our relatives, knew who we were, Pietras and Kowalski cousins. It didn^Rt matter to Mary and me what was playing at the Ace. I remember seeing Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Peter Pan along with Trapeze and The Big Country. During the school year, the Ace would show movies with religious themes. St. Hedwig's entire student body, grades kindergarten through eighth, would march the five blocks to the theater. We walked in our assigned pairs, a procession of maroon uniforms and beanies. On those days, the movies at the Ace were an extension of our religious training. On the Saturday before my First Confession, Mary and I rounded the last corner leading to the theater and glanced up at the marquee. There before us was the title of the week's featured film, And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. The marquee did not say "(X) Rated" as it might have back then, or "(R) Rated" as it would today. No, Mary and I simply paid our admission and walked inside the Ace, totally focused on buying popcorn and soft drinks and getting to our seats. I remember nothing about the plot. I do recall that Ms. Bardot appeared in various stages of undress, then finally stark naked. We were spellbound. We never made eye contact or exchanged a word, not even when the ending credits rolled. We never talked about staying to see it a second time. We just did. As Mary and I strolled home later that afternoon, I knew that I should never have stayed to watch Ms. Bardot even once. How was I going to confess that I had stayed to watch the movie twice? Even before I got home, I was mentally reciting the Ten Commandments, trying to figure out which one I had sinned against. After dinner, I checked my Catechism, only adding confusion to my guilt. This sin, which was looking more and more mortal, wasn't going to fit neatly under the catchall "I disobeyed my parents two times." After all, my mother and father hadn't said, "Helena, don^Rt go see Ms. Bardot in And God Created Woman." I read the Ten Commandments a few more times, eventually eliminating all but one. Still confused and with a heavy heart, I made my selection. The day of my First Confession wasn't anything like my First Holy Communion, still a year away. There was no white organdy dress and shoes, no Mass, no excitement, and no family looking on with pride. Mr. Bunk would not be playing joyous music on the huge pipe organ on the choir loft above us. Instead, St. Hedwig's church would be ethereal, and imposing, and silent, except for whispered confessions and absolutions. Both second grade classes, about 130 of us, walked in pairs across Linden Street into St. Hedwig's church. Because there were so many of us, six priests were hearing confessions, four in confessionals and two at the altar rail. I sat in a pew with a group of classmates who would be making our First Confessions to a priest we didn't know seated at the rail in front of St. Joseph's altar. In just moments, it was my turn. I walked up to the altar rail with my hands folded in prayer, knelt down on the cool marble step, made the Sign of the Cross, and began making my confession to the serene stranger. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my First Confession. I have committed the following sins. I committed adultery." Father had until that moment been sitting with his eyes closed and his right elbow on the railing, forehead in hand. No sooner had I whispered the word "adultery" when Father's head shot up and he stared at me, his eyes wide open and incredulous. "You couldn't have committed adultery," he said in definitely more than a whisper. I shifted my weight on my knees. I could feel my heart pounding faster. This was not going well. "Tell me what happened," he whispered now, having regained his composure. I shifted my weight again, and began recounting the events of the previous Saturday. By this time I could hear my heart beating. My knees were locked together. I imagined that 130 pairs of eyes were focused on my back. This was taking forever. When I finished with "...and I watched the movie twice," Father didn't say anything for several seconds. "You didn^Rt commit adultery,"he finally whispered. Now I was even more confused and forgot to tell him my other sin, a venial matter that would keep until next time. I listened as Father gave me absolution and my penance. He blessed me and I made the Sign of the Cross. At that moment, only God knew which one of us was more relieved that, except for saying my penance, my First Confession was over. Copyright ) 1998 by Helena Loflin ======================================================================== The Net by Dave Phillips TWILIGHT OF THE LEMMING In the early days of Apple's Macintosh Computer, the firm ran a brief Monty-Pythonish ad that depicted identical-looking men in suits shuffling in close drill off of a cliff. This was an attack on the numbing conformity which corporate information technology (IT) departments, sometimes jocularly called Management Information Systems departments, have manifested since the early days of the Glass House priesthood. It was also an attack on IBM, whose pre-cataclysm style of conservative dress and organization-man conduct was surpassed only by the proctological inquisitions by EDS of its employees under its founder, Ross Perot. The ad led to some bruised feelings, unlike the "1984" ad (introducting the Mac and aired only once - during the Jan. 1984 SuperBowl) in which a female athlete, chased by armed troops, hurls a large hammer into a wallscreen broadcasting the brainwash-harangue of a fascist dictator (who looked and sounded not unlike Lyndon LaRouche), smashing the screen and presumably liberating the masses of shaved, prisoner-like men filling the chamber in dazed silence. No, the lemmings ad hit closer to home: for one thing, they all wore suits. The personal computer revolution was on, and the old CP/M operating system was surpassed by Microsoft's MS-DOS, based on a product called QDOS licensed by Bill Gates at an obscenely low figure and repackaged for IBM's Intel-based PC and XT for quite ample fees. Apple's production of the Motorla-based Mac led to what is now called MacOS, succeeding Apple's II and its own Apple-DOS. The Mac's OS was in part the offspring of innovations in graphical interfaces at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and Apple built on PARC's innovations, adding a number of their own. To this day, Apple has more patents than Microsoft, which will not be surprising to anyone who has used a Mac. Thanks to the Intel-based PC and the Motorola-based Macintosh, computing power shifted partially to the desktop, where it forced a recasting of centralized computing into a server-based distributed model. Today, Apple is struggling despite unmatched brand loyalty among its users. At the same time, the Redmond behemoth has hegemony in operating systems and many office software products, and now we have a large number of overpaid yuppies challenging Microsoft's integration of Internet Explorer into Windows 98, claiming Microsoft enjoys monopoly power in many market segments and can crush anyone at will. I say that may well be true, and when Microsoft engages in promoting vaporware to starve a competitor who offers better technology in the here-and-now, I'm all in favor of throwing another pie in Bill's face. But let's look at all those lemmings who insist on running Microsoft's operating software and office products to the blind exclusion of alternatives. Many of the same folks bitching about Microsoft's dangerous market share in operating systems are the same folks who have blithely marched in lockstep with the herd to select not the best software, but the most widely used - widely used because others further up the herd had previously chosen it, etc. Is Microsoft all-powerful? Do the power-users in designer clothes need Janet Reno to arm-wrestle Bill Gates to abject defeat before they can sleep well at night? I don't really care about the sleeping habits of homo yuppus, but I do think we've seen a "Microsoft" in recent history. It was called IBM. The IBM whose mainframes supported at least a dozen industries in themselves. The IBM who could promulgate an architecture and for decades never bother to implement it fully. The IBM whose marketing people used FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) to get their way with corporate clients when MIS directors might inadvertently stray so far as to consider a competitor's product, such as a clone (then plug-compatible) mainframe. This all-capable, all-powerful organization missed several key trends, despite top-notch R&D and manufacturing capabilities, lost dominance the desktop hardware market, and was crushed in desktop computer software by Microsoft. Now there have been all kinds of published stories of how Microsoft spiked their joint development efforts with IBM in order to come out ahead with their own Windows. True or no, by the early 1990s IBM was trying to ship its PCs with OS/2 pre-installed, and normally passive home users - many with their VCR clocks still blinking 12:00 - took the trouble to wipe it off their system and install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1. After a painful transition, featuring plant closings and major downsizings, IBM refocused its business units toward internet products, corporate groupware and communications (e.g., its acquisition of Lotus), and services to the glass houses that IBM helped create. Even now, while IBM appears to be doing better than it's done in eons (in internet time), no one is pointing toward IBM as omnipotent and threatening. How soon we forget the 1970s and 1980s. Gates was right when he said that Microsoft remains vulnerable to shifts in the market, especially major shifts of the kind that nearly did IBM in, when the market for raw mainframe iron tapered off. In my opinion, Microsoft is vulnerable to its combination of lack of internal basic innovation and its apparent belief that users will remain loyal to Microsoft if enough other users are - lemmings again. Shades of FUD. My concerns are therefore less about what Microsoft considers a "browser," and where it embeds it, and more with the IT departments and the types of individuals who are making technology recommendations for managements of large organizations, which end up influencing our broader social and technical environment. Many of these folks have embraced Windows NT Server as the new center of their being despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact - that NT requires a new priesthood for configuration and support in large networks. As for impacting the broader markets for hardware and software, there is no doubt that large organizations have a disproportionate impact on the evolution of these markets. After all, many home users would be perfectly served by the old Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS, which took maybe 1.5MB fully loaded on a PC; but such users now end up with the full Microsoft Office suite before they can compose their first sentence. This was not the result of advertising in which consumers were made to feel inadequate for using their old software, but rather the fact that much of this software is bundled with hardware purchases, after the software was developed for so-called power users in larger organizations who appeared to need (but seldom themselves use) the myriad features in something like Word '97. Traditional corporate IT or MIS departments were based on scarcity. Hardware was very expensive, unreliable and hard to use. Software was very expensive, usually requiring a large percentage of custom development and the development environments sucked (to draw from technical jargon). Computer networking required vendor specialists, each of whom went to school at length to learn how to point fingers convincingly at the specialists from other vendors for a minimum number of hours or days before getting down to fixing their own problems. Since the 1980s, hardware reliability has improved, as have software tools and development environments, and far more can be accomplished well behind the "bleeding edge" of computing technology. The ideal IT "professional," in my opinion, is someone who wants users to understand the technology they're using, at least to the point of becoming as self-sufficient as possible. This professional keeps up with the rapid change of events, is active in his or her community (or cybercommunity), realizes that hardware is often the least of anyone's problems these days, and that the best application software can do - when running on an adequate platform - is to facilitate sound business processes (i.e., it can't create processes that don't exist, and it can't fix broken ones). Of course, this is an ideal. A major problem with such IT professionals is survival. Many corporations view technical people in a schizoid manner. They are often essential for mission-critical applications, but after the project-of-the-month or -year they often endure benign neglect or are sometimes discarded like facial tissue. The old IT mentality is in part a survival adaptation which helps perpetuate the environment which necessitated the adaptation. Computer people are not an intrinsic part of the culture of, say, large manufacturers or distribution firms. They have been viewed historically as a necessary cost more than as enablers of critical business activities. Some executives have even questioned whether ITers have more than 10% of the same DNA as their line personnel. This led IT professionals to view their careers from the standpoint of personal technical development for steadily increasing marketability and a succession of different employers, and not as staffers who would enjoy progressively greater trust from and responsibilities to their employers. Big Iron in the old days provided security for these staffers: it was an employment machine and provided long-term experienced-based career paths for technical people: clearly such Glass Houses had to be kept running, and even top corporate managements could see that, and IT folks could move from one Glass House to another. Today, in the era of information systems outsourcing arrangements, complex systems such as large client-server arrangements based on NT Server, AS/400s and mainframes fill the same role. This would then explain how some such professionals would fail to see the utility in products such as the Macintosh, which can perform the full range of functions but which require far less support from technical personnel. The Mac EvangeList is replete with tales of middle-school kids setting up new Macs from scratch, configuring email servers, etc. Hardly a computer for "real men," despite the positive experiences from the publishing, biotechnology and education markets. The problem is that glass houses and technical bureaucracies are successful adaptations only in the short term. Because these bureaucracies emphasize technology and downplay the industry-specific and firm-specific knowledge that makes for successful IT implementations, such knowledge is minimized in management calculations. Thus, longer term, managements come to believe that such staffs can simply be swapped out, or outsourced, to an external supplier. This became a management fad in the early-to-mid Nineties. The Kodak outsourcing deal of 1990 - in which the giant ceded its data centers to IBM, datacom management to DEC, and PC setup and support to Businessland - was a landmark in this process. Outsourcing has not always been successful, although many large organizations are loathe to tell their tales of woe. Simply put, many threw out the baby with the bathwater, and didn't notice or care until it was too late. And for those organizations who have not outsourced some or all of their information technology functions, the contradiction between IT as a critical enabling technology and as an expensive "countercultural" cost center has resulted in very high rates of turnover for Chief Information Officer positions in major corporations in the U.S. With top management changing every two or three years, many IT departments have not come to grips with major issues such as the year 2000 problem (Y2K) until now, i.e., when the loaded gun has been pointed in their faces. The Y2K problem is in no small part a bequest of the IBM-styled Glass House. Old systems were based on unit record devices, such as 80-character card images. Even when punch cards were replaced with key-to-tape and key-to-disk systems, and finally online transaction systems, many business applications remained cast in that mold. Storing dates in mmddyy format was adequate in the 1960s and 1970s, and dates could be presorted if stored in yymmdd format. Programmers then figured that any organization running their code 30 years later deserved whatever they got. Well, they do. Of course, the current fads - such as client-server enterprise systems and moves to NT Server for enterprise networking - are likely to foment different kinds of crises for IT departments and the corporations that maintain them. For one thing, there is much skepticism over whether NT Server has the juice and reliability to support enterprise-wide networks. If you're an IT professional who thinks NT holds the key to future personal marketability, that's not a problem. If you're the Chief Operating Officer of the corporation, well, perhaps someone should have warned you before you'd signed the dotted line. The answer, of course, won't be known for a few years, by which time the IT staffers and the COO may well have moved on to other firms. Client-server systems became hot stuff earlier than NT Server, and some corporations and agencies have committed to systems such as SAP in the hopes of transforming their organizations for the next millenium. Unfortunately, the year 2000 has far fewer zeroes than the right hand of their project cost figures. For example, IT staffers with any SAP experience came into high demand so quickly that industrial firms, for example, found themselves facing terrible salary compression problems. Skill shortages and project management failures have led to cancellations of numerous client-server projects; this is not necessarily the fault of particular packages or of the client-server paradigm per se, but the problem that organizations who go that route are making a major commitment to transform their business processes and this transformation is not at heart an IT issue. The problem in my view boils down to a simple fact of life. Applied IT is not a science, but a craft. For whatever reason, IT folks are viewed as craftspeople and see themselves the same way. Craftspeople and bureaucrats are a dangerous combination, because you can wind up with wonderful systems that are unusable, or systems that work small but fail to scale up. Formal education and a history of positions held do not define a good craftsperson, but accomplishments do. So do lessons learned from failure. Managements must come to understand that if they suffer from ill-defined goals and poorly-understood business processes, so will their systems, no matter what platform, OS and application software they're running. They will then realize that, once goals and processes are well defined, it is no sin against nature to select easier-to-use, robust technologies that actually work as advertised. - March 1998 Copyright ) 1998 by Dave Phillips ======================================================================== The Net by Marek Zielinski PDi's NET RESOURCES FOR POLONIA Beginning with Issue 23 we include "Polonia Resources on the Web", a listing of useful and/or interesting WWW resources in Poland and about Polish affairs. The list is produced in Polish and English, and is updated weekly. "Polonia Resources" is included only in the HTML edition, and can be reached on the Web at http://www.pdi.net/lynx/zrodla/polskie.html (Polish edition) and http://www.pdi.net/lynx/zrodla/polskie_e.html (English edition). ======================================================================== The back page by Dave Phillips ORWELL MACCABEUS: Some thoughts on Channukah for my Polish friends I never learned Channukah's historical context growing up. Sure, we were taught about Mattathias and his sons, their leadership of a 2nd Century B.C. Judean revolt against Syria's defilement of the Temple and Syria's attempt to Hellenize the Judeans. We were taught about the miracle of the one-day supply of holy oil burning eight days in the Second Temple in Jerusalem after its resanctification. And, as with many Jewish baby-boomers, Channukah became more attractive as I got older, as a tale of political resistance and a struggle for religious freedom. Recently, however, I was laid up for a few days and used some of that time to read up on Channukah. It was an eye-opener. The Selucid Empire of Antiochus IV was attempting to stamp out Judaism, and the Maccabees' revolt began in 167 BC. This fight for religious survival, carried on by Judah Maccabee after his father's death, ran for 3 years, at which time the Temple was resanctified (the Syrians had been running pigs through it). Fighting resumed in 160 B.C., and Judah was killed; his brother Jonathan took the leadership and later his brother Simon won a lasting peace with Syria in 142 B.C. The subsequent reign of Macabbee (Hasmonean) kings was straight out of Orwell's Animal Farm. Each king served also as high priest, and this concentration of power was disastrous. The generations after Simon embraced Hellenistic culture and turned against their own people's religion. For example, Simon's grandson, King Alexander Yannai, held a Greek-style drinking party to watch the execution of 800 Pharisees who had already been forced to watch the murder of their wives and children. King John Hyrcanus in 121 B.C. forcibly converted the conquered Idumeans, a people south of Jerusalem, to Judaism. No others have ever been forcibly converted to Judaism, either before or since. The Jews reaped from this act a peculiar crop: the grandchild of two of these Idumeans was Herod, who grew up eventually to maneuver his appointment by the Roman Senate as "King of the Jews," whereby he promptly murdered 45 members of the Sanhedrin, just for starters. This first Herod, as far as murderers go, made Caligula look like the unfortunate product of a broken home. Another consequence of Hasmonean rule was the civil war between John Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus for succession to the throne. They appealed to the Roman general Pompey, who was busy conquering Syria, to arbitrate. Pompey selected Hyrcanus, who then asked Pompey's forces into Jerusalem to help protect him against his brother. The Romans obliged, entering Jerusalem in 63 B.C., and faced no resistance other than at the Temple Mount, where a three-month siege led to the killing of thousands of priests and other Temple defenders. Having consolidated control of Judea, Pompey appointed Hyrcanus "ethnarch;" Rome executed Hyrcanus in 30 B.C. for treason, and the Maccabean dynasty was no more. The next century saw the crucifixion of Joshua the Essene, and the later armed revolt led by Bar Kochba, culminating in Rome's destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple, and the dispersion of the Jews in 70 A.D. What, you may ask, has this to do with the price of bigos in Bielsko? First, I find it amazing how rapidly the revolt for religious freedom and for cultural survival turned into its opposite. I also find it interesting how thoroughly the Hasmonean dynasty sowed the seeds of its own destruction. More importantly, I wonder what my ancestors were doing as they watched the Maccabees betray the revolution their parents led. Did they excuse them due to the exigencies of geopolitics? Or were they too busy with their day-to-day affairs, telling each other, "All these kings are crooks and murderers, what can you do?" In any case, I've read of no internal challenge to the Hasmoneans, although I'm still looking. The only resistance the Jews offered was martyrdom, and there were no Jewish fighters until the Romans were literally at the Temple Mount. The Talmud's rabbinical authorities command Jews to place menorahs in their windows, to publicize the miracle of the oil lasting eight days. Many Jews prefer to view Channukah as a commemoration of the successful revolt for religious freedom. To me, however, the menorah has become a warning for all people: that we can never excuse or justify corruption and betrayal under any rationale, and that we can never relax our vigilance. It has happened with most revolts and revolutions, no matter how righteous. The oil burned for eight days, but thanks to the acquiescence of the Judeans to the Hasmoneans, within a century the Temple was in Roman hands, and six generations later the Temple was rubble and its people were dispersed. Could this tragedy have been averted by keeping the High-Priesthood and monarchy separate? Was such cultural change and military conquest merely a matter of time given the broader forces in the region, especially Rome and Egypt? Was there anything people could have done at the time? I don't have any answers to this, just questions. I do think these questions are relevant today, in the Polish context, as most societies are at risk of forgetting ultimately the sensibilities that held it together to resist oppressors and to reconstitute themselves. It's this forgetting, and the relief that the struggle is finally over, that provide the biggest footholds for those later steps to social self-destruction. - Channukah 1997 Copyright ) 1998 by Dave Phillips ========================================================================= Notes on Contributors Marek Cypryk (mcypryk@bilbo.cbmm.lodz.pl) is a scientist (polymer chemistry) in the Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Lodz, Poland and a contributing editor of Pigulki. He was a co-founder and editor of POGLADY, Solidarity magazine of Lodz (1980-81). Artur J. Kowalski (artur@homer.njit.edu) of Newark, NJ, is a Ph.D. candidate in image processing at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He works as a software engineer for TelLabs, Inc., consulting for AT&T in Middletown, NJ. He is a co-founder and the current president of the Polish Student Organization in New York (http://www.pso-usa.org). Helena Loflin (nee Pietras) was born and raised in the Polish section of Wilmington, Delaware. She is a human resources manager for a pharmaceutical company based in Fort Worth, TX. Dave Phillips (davep@niagaracyber.com) of Kenmore NY was active in the movements to support NSZZ "Solidarnosc," was a cofounder of the EARN/ Poland Link Discussion Group, and is a cofounder and an editor of Pigulki magazine. As a longtime computing person, he works for a firm which develops and supports software for manufacturers. An economic geographer, he runs Niagara Cyber, a research, informatics and internet consultancy in Western New York. Katarzyna Stanclik (ks134@columbia.edu) graduated from Brown University in Providence, RI, and is currently working on her Ph.D. degree in political science at Columbia University, NY. Jack Tuszynski is a computer scientist who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Pigulki articles are written on his private machine in his own time and do not have any relation to his employer. He holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science from the California State University, Northridge. In school he specialized in the field of artificial language technology. He maintains an agrotourism website for his wife's hometown Miedzylesie and is recently involved in promoting a local AGROREG (tourist industry) economic zone on the NorthWest edge of the Klodzko Valley. Veronika Zielinska (vezi75@aol.com) received her B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Vassar College in 1997. She is currently an Associate at Advanced Renal Technologies, LLC, and plans on moving to Poland to continue her study of language. She translates articles in Polish, Spanish and English, and enjoys photography, travel and alpine hiking. Marek Zielinski (zielinski@interport.net) of Rego Park, NY is a chemist, computer consultant and a contributing editor of Pigulki . He was a founding member of the EARN-Poland link discussion group in 1987, and was co-founder and editor of POGLADY, Solidarity magazine of Lodz (1980-81). On IRC he is known as Pigularz. ========================================================================= ABOUT PIGULKI LEGAL BITS: PIGULKI is published irregularly by a small international conspiracy working since July of 1990 to foster free and responsible discussion amongst and between Poles, Polonia and others interested in Poland and its transformation to a more free society. Only sweat and photons are used in the production of Pigulki: the editors assure readers that no trees have been felled to feed our feverish efforts, nor have the world's fossil fuel reserves been depleted to power black helicopters judged essential by some conspiracy theorists. PIGULKI is distributed electronically free of charge to masochistic readers in an hypertext edition on the Worldwide Web, and in an ascii edition available from an authorized distributor, bulletin board, or ftp site (below). Signed articles are Copyright (c) 1998 by their authors. PIGULKI may not be copied or retransmitted without prior permission by the editors and notification of your local public health authorities. Your articles, letters, threats, denunciations are welcome; please send them to any editor you can find who'll admit being one. We reserve the right to edit for brevity. Readers, publishers, researchers, intelligence agents please note: FAIR USE: Permission to excerpt is granted in advance for academic use, provided there is full attribution and concurrent notification of the editors. REPRINTING: You must obtain permission to reprint a signed piece from the author(s), who must in turn notify a listed editor that they have so granted permission. Further, a reprinter must supply one copy of the reprinting to the Pigulki editors. Finally, the reprint must attribute the article's original appearance in (e.g.) Pigulki network magazine, ISSN 1060-9288, No. 23, June 21, 1997. Editors EMAIL Marek Cypryk (Lodz, Poland) mcypryk@bilbo.cbmm.lodz.pl Dave Phillips (Kenmore, NY, USA) DaveP@niagaracyber.com Jacek Ulanski (Lodz, Poland) julanski@ck-sg.p.lodz.pl Marek Zielinski (Rego Park, NY, USA) zielinski@interport.net Production Editor, Postscript edition Wojtek Hempel (Lodz, Poland) hempel@lodz.pdi.net HYPERTEXT EDITIONS: Pigulki's hypertext editions from 1994 (with some earlier articles) are available on the web sites of PDi, Limited in Lodz, Poland (http://www.pdi.net/pigulki/) or in the United States (http://www.usa.pdi.net/pigulki/). AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTORS. To subscribe to the ascii edition, mail a request to: North America: Dave Phillips (DaveP@niagaracyber.com) Oceania: Marek Samoc (mjs111@phys.anu.edu.au) Europe, Africa: Marek Zielinski (zielinski@interport.net) BACK ISSUES: Back issues are available by anonymous ftp, by E-mail and using WWW nad Gopher. Postscript: Pigulki back issues 10 through 16 are available in printable Postscript form. HTML: Beginning with Issue 17, Pigulki is published in HTML and available at Pigulki site. Back issues will be successively converted to HTML. As always, we continue to distribute the ASCII form by E-mail * ANONYMOUS FTP: The sites at ftp.pdi.net, ccpnxt7.in2p3.fr, ftp.man.lodz.pl and laserspark.anu.edu.au store back issues in subdirectory /pub/pigulki. Log in as 'anonymous' and give your E-address as password. ASCII files have extension pub, Postscript files have extension ps. * MAIL: Send mail to majordomo@pdi.net with the line 'index pigulki' to obtain the list of available files, and with the line 'get pigulki pigulk12.pub' to obtain eg. Pigulki #12 in ASCII. * GOPHER: Connect to laserspark.anu.edu.au using your gopher client. * Search Engines (VERONICA, LYCOS, ALTAVISTA etc.) to locate issue 12 of Pigulki, search using a keyword of pigulk12.pub (for ascii versions) or pigulk12.ps (for postscript). Issues 1 through 9 are stored as "pigulki4.pub" etc. Special thanks These people have made space available to archive Pigulki and we are grateful : * Wojtek Wojcik of the Centre de Calcul of Lyon , * Marek Samoc of the Australian National University in Canberra , * Darek Milewski of Poniecki Foundation in Berkeley * Piotr Wilk of Politechnika Lodzka ======================================================================== .